


it snows on jakku at midnight

by nightdotlight



Series: Jedi June 2020 [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Gen, Lightsabers, field trip to ilum, oh my god this took so long to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24615043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightdotlight/pseuds/nightdotlight
Summary: Heat from the engines of their ship melts the snow around them when they land planet side, not far from the Temple. Even so, Rey immediately clutches at her arms upon leaving its confines, despite the heavy coat she wears, and Mace knows that by the time they return, their transport will be snowed half under.Ilum’s wind bites at his face. He braces. He wonders.
Relationships: Rey & Mace Windu
Series: Jedi June 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1776460
Comments: 9
Kudos: 82
Collections: Mace Windu Fandom Safe Space





	it snows on jakku at midnight

**Author's Note:**

> day two: lightsaber
> 
> this is a full day late because I fell asleep at midnight writing it lmao

Ilum is always beautiful, no matter the state of the galaxy around it.

Heat from the engines of their ship melts the snow around them when they land planet side, not far from the Temple. Even so, Rey immediately clutches at her arms upon leaving its confines, despite the heavy coat she wears, and Mace knows that by the time they return, their transport will be snowed half under.

They make a brisk pace through the snow, the great forest at their back along with the ship, and when Mace sneaks a look at his new student’s face under her hood, it’s twisted with a mixture of indignation at the climate, making Mace hide his smile under his collar, and a sheer wonder that lights up her face entirely as she looks at her surroundings.

_ Desert child. _ When she came, she said that she didn’t have a home— but that she had spent eleven years on Jakku. The planet seems to have poured as much of itself into her as it would anyone born there.

When this is done, when they next have free time— not necessarily leave, as for now that is synonymous with Council meetings and lessons and whatever they can scrape, but in the future, Mace intends to take her back there, if she’s agreeable.

He’ll take her back to the desert. Not to leave her there, but— she’d said that she was waiting. The Council hadn’t asked for what, but the admission paired with the lack of a surname is damning.

Whoever she was waiting for never came. She was left there, and—

It’s a delicate situation. The Jedi Order doesn’t care much about from where or whom its members hail, so long as they strive to uphold the Code and their moral duty. But it’s clear that Rey, for all her kindness and light and drive, is still very much chained by that fact.

That once before, someone had left her behind to the nonexistent mercies of a desert’s baking heat, and they hadn’t ever come back.

Today, amidst ice and towering crystal, she’ll make her lightsaber. Mace hopes that it will give her the strength to take that first step on the journey she’ll take— the journey away from the little girl alone on Jakku.

The journey towards becoming a Jedi Knight.

Ilum’s wind bites at his face. He braces. He wonders.

His hopes and the snow are all he has to guide her today.

When Rey came stumbling through the artefact into the Temple, dizzy and angry and vengeful, Mace Windu felt the disturbance in the Force and thought:  _ fuck _ .

He hadn’t thought he’d take another Padawan so soon: had refused, point blank, to take on a student in wartime, when he spends most days on a battlefield and those he doesn’t in hyperspace, snowed under by meetings and paperwork. Even now, he thinks— knows— that it’s far too dangerous, that he can’t hope to protect a learner in the bloodied chaos of a battlefield.

But the Force seems to disagree, because it sent Rey. Mace had been in the Temple at the time, and though every other Jedi, youngling and Master alike, had felt it, only he had been called.

So— in Mace’s defence, he hadn’t exactly intended to take Rey as a Padawan.

Barely more than a decade ago, he had been part of the Council that denied Anakin Skywalker training. At the time, he had argued for allowing him to be taught, but—

Now, he had taken personal responsibility for guiding someone a full decade older than what they had deemed “too old” to Knighthood.

Distantly, he feels like the Force is laughing at him, and the laugh itself sounds an awful lot like Qui-Gon Jinn.

Rey’s eyes are huge when they step from what is fast becoming a blizzard outside into the stiller, if no less bitingly cold, air of the Ilum Temple.

“Stars above,” she whispers out into the silence, and Mace can’t help the flicker of soft warmth that rises in his chest at her wonder, the smile that threatens to quirk at his lips. When she’d stepped into the Temple Gardens, the first time, she’d had much the same reaction—  _ awe _ , at life and nature, and a lift of her head to bask in sunlight that didn’t scorch plants, but nurtured them.

Here, he can feel the midday-desert-breeze expansion of her presence as she explores the atrium, attention flickering between walls and decorations as fast as he can register it. It seems Mace is forever cursed— or blessed, as certain people would say— to train curious Padawans. Rey is quieter in her questioning than Depa used to be, but she’s no less interested, merely subtler.

He leads her though the still air to the true opening of the Temple— each breath he takes is crisp, and his exhales mist the air.

Before him, the dawn light melts the ice.

Rey looks at him.

“ _ Go _ ,” Mace urges.

She does.

The Living Force thrumming around him, Mace sinks into meditation as he waits. Ilum is louder than most planets, and he has to strive to keep his shields locked down against the many voices clamouring to tear away pieces of him. Even so, he still senses things— the stalk of a predator through the snow and underbrush, the wind howling through the valleys of the planet, the grumbling roar of a glacier.

Beneath it all, Mace can hear the crystals of Ilum singing in the caverns below him in a pure and delighted harmony. Jedi are children of the Force in every way that matters, and the kyber caves reflect  _ bright, light, welcome _ in response to their presence.

He’s only ventured beneath the Ilum Temple once in his life, to retrieve the crystal of his first lightsaber. An Initiate, then, years before the shatterpoints began to show him glimpses of a purple crystal, a blade deeper-toned than his original light blue.

They still sing to him, but it’s not a call; just a greeting, pleased and proud. Encased in electrum and gold, his crystal replies with its own song— subtler, sweet and mild, the lower melody of the Hurrikaine crystal. If he listens very carefully, opens his mind up to that and that alone and sinks into the music, he can just about glean impressions—

_A blizzard_ , it sings.  _ A blizzard, above, and a canopy of pine and snow. Stars, beyond that, and a great journey among them, from sand to sea to endless forests, and the flicker of a great many souls, and— _

Mace can’t understand any more than that, but the sounds bring him peace regardless. The crystals have their language, and he has his own, but what they are in common is the Force by which they communicate, and the emotions which make for a shared voice is how they bridge the gap, and—

—that is enough.

Rey returns hours later, kyber in her grip and new confidence in her spine.

She’s smiling, too, a bright expression that seems to reflect off the crystalline walls of the atrium, and again Mace feels something soft rise in his chest at the sight.

Something’s changed, too— between her first step into the caverns and now, she’s changed. A step has been taken. No matter which direction it was taken in, it’s progress, and therefore it is precious beyond comprehension.

“Master Windu,” she says. Her breath still mists the dry, frigid air, but she’s no longer so at odds with her surroundings as she had been. Her desert-wind presence in the Force has changed, from the heat of the day to a cooler midnight, and the air around her no longer crackles with something akin to a nervous static, but merely whispers of serenity.

She opens her hand, palm facing upwards. Two crystals— both a pale, pale blue, like the stones used to build the Ilum Temple itself, like the way a desert sky turns light azure before melting to amber and gold. They sing a song of curiosity, wonder, as she holds them close, and this time Mace can’t hide his approving smile.

“Come, Padawan,” he says, and just for a second sends an impression to her of his own pride in her achievement, that she has only been here for months and yet her progress is so great.

Her smile cracks wider, just for a second, to something sunny and open. “Okay,” she says, and holding her kyber crystals gently in her hands, follows him out into the wind and snow.

Forging a lightsaber is a meditative task, and though through rituals such as the Gathering it is usually completed as part of a group, just as often it is a solitary activity. Rey seems to fall into the latter camp, as once on board the ship she almost immediately sinks into a deep meditation, the different components of what will become her saber in front of her.

Mace busies himself with starting the engine and getting ready to pilot the craft back to the Dantooine System, where it has been agreed they’ll rendezvous with the  _ Endurance _ .

It’s easy to slip into a rhythm, the pre-flight checks almost providing a form of moving meditation. He’ll do katas once they’re in hyperspace, but for now, he leaves Rey to her work in the other room. Weeks before they’d set off, she’d mentioned impressions of its design, the sense-memory of its hilt in her hands. 

He wonders, now, the shape it will take. Two crystals could mean a more focused blade, or even two lightsabers, but—

Rey’s primary weapon is a quarterstaff, and Mace has seen her glances at the weapons of the Temple Guard. It’s not for certain, he knows— but he still makes a note on his data pad for a lesson or two with Master Jaro Tapal. Though her frame is diminutive compared to his, there is no denying that he can give her a good start in adapting saber forms to a double-bladed weapon.

And to that note— Mace notes Ahsoka Tano, too, as a potential sparring partner. It will serve Rey well to learn to manoeuvre against Jar’kai, and if she ever intends to use the technique she can likely learn something from the other Padawan.

She’s far older than most, and she’s had barely two months of training, but— she progresses fast, and she has a natural grasp of the Force that makes it easy to teach her. It’s proving difficult for her to move away from the fighting style she’s built up over the years in favour of saber forms— but she’s not pulling away from the challenge, only embracing it, and her unusual and in some ways tragic upbringing in the desert wastes means that she doesn’t need to be taught conviction.

The concept of “try” has long been scorched out of the sands of Jakku. Mace trusts that Rey knows what must be done, and she will do it.

By far the hardest thing about training her, besides her more lethal instincts and the mess of shatterpoints that is the potential future she’s come from, has been the process of teaching her to access the Force.

It was the most crucial part of her early training by far, and still is— partially trained or active and open but untrained Force users are very vulnerable, and as a result very dangerous to themselves and others until they are able to control what they interact with— and what interacts with them.

For Rey, whose connection to the Force was thrown wide open at age nineteen without ever having accessed it before, it’s been a process.

The first time Mace sat down to meditate with her, in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, she very nearly passed out from the overload, and it was lucky she didn’t cause a major psychic event, with how strong she is in the Force. For weeks after they used Mace’s mind to anchor hers throughout meditation, until she was able to process the input.

Now, she meditates just in the other room, and aside from her slightly weaker-than-normal shields, she could be any other Padawan in the Order for her familiarity with seeking out the Living Force and allowing herself to become its conduit.

He’s setting the autopilot when he feels a nudge from Rey’s end of their training bond. Checks wondering what the matter is, and—

It’s purely unintentional on her part, and so was the psychic touch— she’s clearly concentrating, and Mace withdraws so as not to disturb her focus— but he gets an impression of her mind, the way the crystals interact with it, and doesn’t bury his amused smile, this time.

Rey’s mind is intrinsically a desert. Mace hopes that one day, it could be any sandy stretch, that she won’t be confined to the planet she was trapped on, but—

Tonight, Rey’s mind is the sands, and her thoughts are on Ilum. It’s a strange dichotomy, brought about by the resonance of her kyber crystals with her soul, but the effect is quite startling.

Tonight, Rey’s mind connects what will become her weapon with the foundations of her soul, and on Jakku, it is snowing at midnight. The air is dry, and barely but the wind is freezing, raw with the cold, and from the sky, flakes of white drift down to land on sand.

A crystal’s song drifts through the air. Mace smiles, turns away from the bond for now.

Rey has this well in hand.

They’re only hours away from the rendezvous when from the back of Mace’s mind there’s a flare of accomplishment and familiarity. Behind him, the door opens from Rey’s quarters, and there she is.

She looks drained, but triumphant, and in her left hand—

A saberstaff hilt, unmistakable for its length. It’s a matte silver, edged with bronze at the emitters on each side, and the grip long enough for her to take a double-handed position if need be.

It’s deeply graceful, well-crafted in its own right, and she is right to enjoy its appearance. As he watches, Rey moves her hands to the centre of the grip, twists—

And the hilt splits into two sabres, longer than is usual for jar’kai but undeniably useful for the technique. Fitting the two halves back together, Rey looks up at Mace with the flicker of a question tugging at their bond.

He nods, and she presses the emitter buttons.

Two crystal-blue blades are ignited, bathing the room in azure light, and Mace smiles.

From within their casing, Rey’s crystals sing of midnight in the desert and  _snow_ .


End file.
